2009 R&D 100 Winner
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s FemtoScope is a “time microscope” that uses a single-shot, real-time process to stretch out the waveform and capture rare events that are difficult to reproduce. The microscope can improve the performance of traditional recording instruments in the same way that a high-performance lens improves a camera’s output. The instrument can be run in a high-repetition-rate mode to record the real-time evolution of a signal with both ultrafast resolution and nearly endless record length, conditions that were never before obtainable by such an instrument. When combined with a 20-GHz real-time oscilloscope, the FemtoScope produces a 640-GHz instrument capable of recording 100-picosecond frames at 155 million frames per second until the scope’s memory buffers are full. Calculations indicate that the amplitude resolution in effective number of bits for the combined instrument at 265 GHz is nearly unchanged from that of the oscilloscope alone at 20 GHz.
Technology
Time microscope
Developer
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
